Serious Virus Attacks Hit Chinese Computers

With viruses attacking more than 50% of computers in China during the first six months of 2007, the country has suffered most heavily from computer viruses in all regions of the world.

According to a report by Rising Technology Company, a Chinese anti-virus firm, viruses have attacked more than 35 Million PCs during January-June 2007. The company detected a huge number of 130,000 viruses circulating online during those months accounting for an increase of 10% over the same period in 2006.

Rising Technology Company said that about 37% of the total viruses apparently attacked Chinese home users or were characterized with "made in China" features. In China, it has distribution of viruses have become a normal practice as the country virtually has a virus-producing industry. Companies equipped with a developed virus production chain are capable of making viruses using 'batch processing' system.

The report noted that the home Internet software and programs had a number of hidden problems as they didn't have appropriate protection measures. Often, the software developers don't bother to develop patches for the software they build making it convenient for virus creators to attack by exploiting the security holes in the programs.

The report also outlined the existence of backdoor Trojan viruses as the most serious danger to the Web. A hacker uses this virus to acquire command over an affected PC in the absence of its owner's knowledge. He then converts that PC into a 'zombie computer', which he might sell to another attacker. Incidences of such manipulation increased dramatically during the reported period.

Earlier in the month of July 2007, Kingsoft published its report "China computer virus Epidemic and Internet Security". The report said the company blocked about 111,474 new viruses during the first half of 2007. Of those, 68.71% comprised of Trojan horses.

Again during January-June 2007, there was danger from phishing viruses that numbered to 58,245 comprising of 76.04% of all the Trojans. The Worm.WhBoy virus, for example, downloads phishing viruses for theft of users' game or online bank account passwords.

The Rising's report suggests using legitimate software and building good surfing habits to be free from virus attacks.

Related article: Surge in Spam attack

» SPAMfighter News - 8/4/2007